SimCity 4 Affected My View on Social Policy

[Jzcaesar]

Maybe it was just me, but did anyone else who played the SimCity games get into thinking that healthcare was a state funded institution? Because in the game, you, as the government of the city, are charged with providing fully funded healthcare to your citizens. It was only years after, late into my high school years, when I found out that the healthcare system in the USA was a mostly private enterprise.

This lead me to another conclusion: when I first played the game (and SimCity 3000, it's predecessor), I could never create a self sustaining city. In trying to provide my citizens with a functional police and fire department, as well as education and healthcare, I'd barely manage to break even, no matter how large the city scaled. So I ended up reading some walkthroughs and learned the secret to balancing the budget: having more middle and higher income people who pay more taxes. Well duh, but the method to achieve such a city? Raise the taxes on lower income people so they leave.

Well, suddenly, I now had a highly prosperous city. One that could freely afford all the social services the game provides. I even started paying other cities to take my trash so I could have an all-green, clean city. But you know what? That was only possible because I got rid of all the poor people so I wouldn't have to pay to give them the services.

I just thought that was an interesting view on social services within the SimCity game.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Sim City 4 taught you we should raise taxes on poor people to make them go away?

What I'm getting out of this: Sim City 4 turned you into a horrible person.

Sorry, I'm just not sure in what direction this is supposed to have skewed your view, given that it's more a fluke of game mechanics rather than based on any sound economic logic.

 

[Jzcaesar]

Ah yeah, I did sound like that. To clarify, the game made me think that state run health care should be the norm. Interestingly, the game seem to make it only possible if you adopt a non-sensical tax structure.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

The reason it can be hard in SimCity is that it's a very hand off game. You can't make a real policy for public housing and affordable living, so you're left with the market regulating it.

Growing up in Denmark, that was one of the reasons I found the SimCity games so hard back in the early 90s (and to an extent still do). I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that the state has basically no control over city planning and housing. You can zone but that's it.

Growing up in a social democray it's hard to wrap my head around not having progressive taxation to fund public works.

I always found BlueBytes Anno series easier to grasp as the state/player plays a much more active role in deciding who lives where.

I a sense it's shows, in a simple way, the differences between a regulated market in a social democracy and the more free market capitalism of the US.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Yeah, I never got the hang of that and always ended up presiding over a giant slum.

But yeah, when a game rewards you for using tax policies cribbed from pre-revolutionary France, it's not a very good simulation.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it does reflect real life in that angle, the easiest solution to all problems it to off-load them on others.

 

[BrotherRool]

It's interesting and as games go forward I like to think that this will be more and more deliberate and these conversations come up more often. I never thought about it, because the UK just assumes healthcare is a public matter, even the right wing just want private companies doing work paid by the government, but it was actually a pretty bold controversial thing for them to do.

And I think it underlines that healthcare is a very natural responsibility to think of. Police of course, fire services of course ... and health just seems to belong there.

But then you also had to place the powerplants as part of the gameplay too. And of course a government who doesn't make sure that their citizens have power is doing a bad job, governments have huge sway in the building of powerplants and just giving them permission to build somewhere often leads to results (which is what you could interpret the mayor as doing in Simcity) so that suggests that maybe healthcare doesn't have to be government run, but is a government responsibility and they should work hard to make sure healthcare is appropriate. If healthcare coverage is inadequate then thats a failing of the government for their people. And I think its fair to say healthcare coverage was inadequate in the US. (Was it 4 million children without coverage?)


But the tax the poor thing shows the problem with all these kind of statements, you only bring the facts you want to bring. People read Atlas Shrugged and say 'hey look she's right, if the government get involved the trains don't run'. but Atlas Shrugged isn't a scientific study and so can't make any claims to knowing that. It works that way because in Rands fictional universe it works that way. As a matter of fact studies show that when the UK privatised some of its services there was no noticeable increase in efficiency.


But moral ideas, like healthcare being a governmental responsibility are a little more meaningful because those are the sort of statements we can look at without needing a scientific study.